Quite common here to see Gray Partridge do the opposite. When a blizzard begins, they go to short grain stubble or dug ground on hilltops and huddle together, presumably to avoid being covered by hard packed snow. Meanwhile the pheasants die in lower areas with their beaks open and heads stuffed with snow.
During one bad blizzard I had a covey of starving partridge come up to the bird feeders on my deck. One died there in a hole left by my boots. Just another bad day for the sharptails, however, but they are semi-migratory in the northern Great Plains and will move hundreds of miles south if conditions get too extreme. On one winter hunt, we saw a flock of about 150 assemble, wheel around a big wetland till they got about a hundred yards high and then disappear to the southeast. We found they were in the dry bottom feeding on dead snails.
